The Promise and Limits of Private Power

Richard M. Locke is Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science and Management, Deputy Dean of the Sloan School of Management and Head of the Political Science Department at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). His current research focuses on improving labor and environmental conditions in global supply chains. Working with leading firms such as NIKE, Coca Cola and HP, Locke and his students have been showing how corporate profitability and sustainable business practices can be reconciled. Locke is the author of Working in America (with Paul Osterman, Thomas Kochan and Michael Piore, 2001), Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy (with Thomas Kochan and Michael Piore, 1995) and Remaking the Italian Economy (1995, 1997). He was awarded the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching in 2008 and the MIT Class of 1960 Teaching Innovation Award in 2007. Locke was named a 2005 Faculty Pioneer in Academic Leadership by The Aspen Institute.

'Richard Locke confronts issues that are of central concern to scholars, as well as to activists, firms, and consumers: under what conditions, and through which mechanisms, will workers involved in global supply chains be treated fairly? Locke's answer is that no single mechanism - corporate codes of conduct, capacity building, or host government regulation - is sufficient to effect improvements in workers' conditions. Locke argues protecting workers will require a combination of firm-level efforts, long-standing supply-chain relationships, and government effort. He draws on a rich collection of factory-level audit data, as well as in-depth interviews in a range of countries, to explore the determinants of variation in workers' rights outcomes, and to illustrate the conditions under which sustained improvements might occur.' Layna Mosley, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

• 1. The rise of private voluntary regulation in a global economy; 2. The promise and perils of private compliance programs; 3. Does private compliance improve labor standards? Lessons from Nike; 4. Capability building and its limitations; 5. Alternative approaches to capability building: a tale of two Nike suppliers; 6. Are we looking in the wrong places?: Labor standards and upstream business practices in global supply chains; 7. Complements or substitutes? Private power, public regulation, and the enforcement of labor standards in global supply chains; Conclusion: collaboration, compliance, and the construction of new institutions in a world of global supply chains.